This post is brought to you by Carrie Smith, the genius behind the Careful Cents personal finance blog. She’s a Certified Bookkeeper and Financial writer who works hard and plays hard. She’s also a career junkie, social media addict, traveler, debt hater and food lover. Find her on Twitter and Facebook.

According to Wikipedia the definition of customer retention is, “the activity that a selling organization undertakes in order to reduce customer defections. A company’s ability to attract and retain new customers, is not only related to its product or services, but strongly related to the way it services its existing customers and the reputation it creates within and across the marketplace”. I’ve encountered very few companies who actually live up to that definition. But as a consumer it only takes a little bit of effort to make me a happy customer. Here are 5 ways companies can improve customer retention and make me a life long fan.Keep going…

At a time when almost all companies, large and small, seem to be concentrating on improving the bottom line by implementing cost reduction strategies, it appears that many are neglecting perhaps the most important aspect that clients expect: exceptional customer service. While good customer service hardly every gets recognized, poor customer service gains recognition everywhere you turn: from the person at a store asking to speak to a manager as the result of interaction with a disinterested associate, to a poor tip left at a restaurant due to slow or incorrect service, to the forum post born out of frustration from being on hold for what seems like an eternity before getting a live person, to the simple conversation between friends complaining about the lack of planning and service available at the mall on a Sunday afternoon. The customer may not always be right, but it is the employee’s job to make every situation right.Keep going…